Effort can be represented in man-hours work, which is different from time. Better saying, man-hours work is one (eventually among several) objective variable that represents effort and time. Effort is about talent, capabilities, dedication...basically how much you put in an our. And time is time. Both, with money (which is the source for the other resources), translate the commitment of the game developer in producing the best outcome for its clients.

I'm not trying to engage into deep and extensive analyses of the effort required to the soundtrack of each game. I'm just selecting some simple but highly correlated indicators that suggest how much effort / time / money they might have required. Don't bother to look at small ineffiences here and there of such a system. It is simple and it works quite well.

Ultimately, companies don't have any skills. People do. What is the difference between paying to inside or outside workers? The commitment is the same. Never heard of the expression "time is money"? That means you can buy money with time and time with money. The same applies to effort. A talented and very committed worker usually costs more. Conversely, a huge effort from your workers may result in a successful development decision that will make you save millions or months of work. Effort, time and money are all about the same resource, which I would call (in the specific case of videogaming) commitment to quality.

Regarding Rurouni Kenshin, yes most probably he did. But no matter how many hours he spent, he is only 1 man and thus the number of man-hours work could not be as great as several bands producing several tracks. Moreover, I can only find these kind of examples in instrumental music. Aside from Mobi, I don't know any other person that alone produces vocal music. Even if you find some examples of instrumental music that required a lot of time and effort and examples of vocal music that didn't, don't you see those are exceptions? I have more than enough evidences to take that conclusion.

The reason you point out is the "distracting" factor, mine is the demanding factor. Who is right? We will never know. But at least I showed you an example of a Sonic level that has vocal music. Why is it not distracting? Because it is played on low volume. But the result is just great. The same happens with several other games like NFS Hot Pursuit, Pro Skater, TrackMania, Crashday, SSX, MotorStorm, among many others: the volume is low so it's not distracting at all.

Regarding the 2nd answer, come on, you're not being honest. You surely hear Mario 64's music and realize how simple it is. Why can't you admit it? It has less tracks with less time, less instruments and less complexity. It was MUCH easier to produce. You tell there's a difference of 2 years. Fine, compare Sonic Adventure 1 with Mario Sunshine. It's almost the same thing and instead of 2 years "disadvantage" you have 3 years "advantage".

You fail to understand the extent of an indicator. Let's suppose that musicians in general only feel the need to use voice in music when it's highly complex and full of instruments. That is only a conjecture. But, regardless that to be true or false, the fact is that the use of voice in music is highly correlated with complexity, sophistication and number of instruments. So, even if that assumption is not the cause, something else is the cause and the main point is that correlation does exist, even if it's not at 100%. That's why an indicator is used. Not to explain facts but to show patterns. Same thing applies to Statistics.

Licensed soundtracks are neither greater nor lesser than original soundtracks, and I never said anything against this. But if your trying to compare licensed vocal soundtracks with original instrumental, you are already mixing 2 subjects and now I understand why you are making wrong conlusions. Usually, vocal music is indeed more demanding than instrumental (you already know my opinion about this) but it has nothing to do with whether it's licensed or original.

Paying someone to do it for you doesn't require more effort. Please understand that effort and money are 2 different things. They are subsitutional resources but they are not the same thing.

The onus of proof is mine regarding everything that is said in the OP but you must also answer for your claims. You cannot say the OP is wrong without presenting evidence. At most, you can say it may not be right. But then I ask you to specify which sentence of the OP may not be right regarding this subject.

@Point 1: You were and still are making that mistake. At the moment you are comparing the rest of the industry moving to the vocal standard in the mid 2000s with Nintendo using vocals for a while. Using a few vocal parts in few tracks of few games is not the same as massively shifting to vocal music.

@Point 2: So what? The OP doesn't say they don't use it. It just says they've adopted it later than the competition.

I don't want to elaborate on this because it's already off-topic but for me Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 are by far the greatest platformers of all time. And when I say "of all time" I don't mean "oh they were so good when they appeared", I mean today. They didn't sell because they were on a console with very low sales and lots of piracy, so the critic wasn't pressured at giving them high scores. Many gamers didn't enjoy it either because they weren't able to assimilate in their minds the huge leap forward Sonic was making. Anyway, this is just my opinion.

Unlike you say, Mario has not evolved and New Super Mario Bros U seems the same 2D game they have been doing since 1985. Mario 3D got some minor evolutions but it continues to be the same basic character in the same sketch environment devoided of complexity.

Inflated scores to best sellers is not a conspiracy theory. It's business. You are naive if you don't see that and think videogaming web sites could afford to express their own specific opinion about everything, ignoring the way millions of people think (regardless whether they are basic, have very limited knowledge and superficial tastes). They need to please their clients, the site visitors, even if some of those people only care about Wii Fit and Just Dance. The solution is not to give bad scores to those games. The solution is to find who likes those games and put him/her doing good reviews for them. Otherwise, their business would be severely damaged.

On the other hand, there's no big problem in giving bad scores to brilliant niche games like TrackMania Original (which received 5.9 from IGN) or Crashday (which received 4.8 from Gamespot). Some other niche games are lucky to be appreciated by these sites' staffs and get high scores. But, for million sellers, things can't be random. They must get positive comments.

As for those 28 songs from Mario Galaxy, if they were instrumental-only and very simple, that was not much of a waste. But if they were vocal and complex, then I must review my opinion about Nintendo regarding soundtracks. Can I hear some of those tracks?

Let me be as demanding with you as you are with me: you start off with some solid points (however completely useless, but I'll get to that) and then start arguing based on them to prove a point. You get lost in your own reasoning, still believing you're making sense. I can pull criticism out of the air as well and say it applies to you, but it doesn't make it so. How about this?

You and other people here demand from me an extremely high accuracy that not even you are able to follow. It's easy to criticize me out of thin air, not giving subtancial arguments, not providing evidences to back up your claims, and then demand the opposite from me. Well, from now on, I will be as demanding with you. If you want to criticize anything, it's better that you do it full of evidences and well structured arguments.

Now let's go to your substantial claims: you say that I completely ignore skill and quality of work. That is false and thus your example is a fallacy. Highly qualified work costs more --> that is related to money --> money is 1 of the 3 factors I use to assess commitment --> commitment to quality is different from good games, so I don't assess good/bad, which is another false argument you use. You presented no evidences, your arguments are fallacies and your claims are blatant lies.

I have been quite busy these days and my ability to respond to all the posts addressed to me has been low (as you can see). But if you post it again here I promise I will try to answer it. Maybe you could eliminate the points that were already discussed in the meanwhile.

@Zod:

First I would like to adress this statement here:

"You and other people here demand from me an extremely high accuracy that not even you are able to follow. It's easy to criticize me out of thin air, not giving subtancial arguments, not providing evidences to back up your claims, and then demand the opposite from me."

You are misunderstanding a lot of things. I personally am saying "your opinion is not fact", not "your opinion is wrong". To do this, I am poking holes in your theories and opinions to demonstrate that you aren't being objective in your points. That is what I am arguing. Feel free to hold these opinions and I will not cross you, but don't pretend they are facts. That is why we demand accuracy. A fact, by definition is something that can be proven. You are not providing us with "facts", you are providing us with conclusions based loosely around facts.

Anyways, on to the rest:

a. "Effort=talent+dedication+capabilities"
The above is your definition of the word effort. I would just like to point out that none of those words have a quantifiable measure and as such, effort is not an objective term. Others have went into this already so I will be quick, but assigning a value to "effort" you are making some sort of value judgement or assumption in your head that cannot be proven or measured and therefore cannot be considered factual evidence (feel free to hold your opinion though).

b. "I'm just selecting some simple but highly correlated indicators that suggest how much effort / time / money they might have required. Don't bother to look at small ineffiences here and there of such a system. It is simple and it works quite well."
Simple: Yes
Works well: Arguable
Once again, you are just making things up without any real factual basis. Also, the inefficiencies are not small. I have already said this but your argument is as follows: Vocals+Instrument is more effort than Instruments only. However you agreed that vocals are just another instrument. Therefore, by the transitive property Any Specific Instrument+Instruments is more effort than Instruments only (lacking specific instrument. That means, by your logic, an equal conclusion would be Any song with a Piccolo (Specific Instrument+Other Instruments) takes more effort than any song without a Piccolo (Other Instruments Only). That my friend is broken logic.

c. "Ultimately, companies don't have any skills. People do. What is the difference between paying to inside or outside workers?"
So you would give Mamoru Samuragochi (look him up) applause for all the "effort" he put in to "writing" all his music then? I personally would applaud someone more for drawing a nice picture than paying a friend to draw a picture for them...I guess we are getting too far away from the argument at its core in this particular discussion but I will allow you to keep your opinion that licensed music is of equal (or in some cases greater) worth than original music.

d. "A talented and very committed worker usually costs more."
So then you know how much each of those bands who worked with Sonic Team was paid in comparison to standard payments doled out for the purchase of new compositions in other video games? I'd like to see those figures please!

e. "But at least I showed you an example of a Sonic level that has vocal music."
I would like to point out just how different that particular level is to 3D mario games and how similar it is to..(see next point)

f. "NFS Hot Pursuit, Pro Skater, TrackMania, Crashday, SSX, MotorStorm"
...pretty much all racing/sports games...I think that is pretty interesting dont you? I think it lends itself well to the idea that vocal music is good for a certain type of game (typically the kind where you don't really think too much and just go with the flow, which is typically fairly fast paced) and not so good for other types.

g. "Regarding the 2nd answer, come on, you're not being honest. You surely hear Mario 64's music and realize how simple it is. Why can't you admit it? It has less tracks with less time, less instruments and less complexity."
First of all, I would like to say that you were the one who didn't want to argue about musical complexity because it really isn't something that can be measured.
Second, I would like to say that I am truly jealous of your magical ears that allow you to hear effort. That is truly a miracle...
Third, I would like to say that I find it humorous that you are trumpeting generic, cheesey rock tracks as your paragon of musical effort.

h. "But, regardless that to be true or false, the fact is that the use of voice in music is highly correlated with complexity, sophistication and number of instruments."
Woah, I would directly argue that point! Most rock bands have 1-2 guitars, bass, drums and vocals. Most pop bands have vocals and some electronics. Most rap bands have vocals and some electronics. Most symphonies have well over 10 different instruments, with multiple people at some instruments. Then there are bands such as Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You! Black Emperor who fall into the category of Post-Rock which typically is more complex and sophisticated and has more instruments than most rock bands.
I would say that the opposite point is true. Vocals make songs easier to carry in simple, repetive pieces (I have already went over this) because they give the brain something to attach to. Take vocals out of most songs and you are left with something quite boring and repetive. Because of this, acts lacking vocals must go the extra mile in their compositions to keep their music interesting and keep it from getting boring.
Just another way in which your indicator is broken...

i. " The onus of proof is mine regarding everything that is said in the OP but you must also answer for your claims. You cannot say the OP is wrong without presenting evidence."
I don't say the OP is wrong, I say that it is not fact (and therefore, not "truth). I have already explained this and I think it is pretty clear that what you are saying is not some objective truth but instead your opinion, which is based on your interpretation of some facts.

j. "You were and still are making that mistake. At the moment you are comparing the rest of the industry moving to the vocal standard in the mid 2000s with Nintendo using vocals for a while. Using a few vocal parts in few tracks of few games is not the same as massively shifting to vocal music."
So Nintendo is no longer allowed creative freedom to create tracks that fit he mood of the piece and use vocals when they deem it necessary and they must instead follow the industry standard, even if it means sacrificing artistic freedom and it jeopardizes the mood or environment of the game?
Nintendo uses vocals when they feel that vocals would make the music better fit for the game. Isn't that what everybody in the game industry should do instead of just blindly following? Isn't this something that should be lauded, not insulted?

k. "It just says they've adopted it later than the competition."
But they didn't...we've already gone over this. I get that you may point me to "j" as what you mean in this point but I will once again point you towards my response to J. You are advocating following the leader, not innovation. Nintendo uses vocals when it should use vocals and it has been that way for a long time and it should stay that way for a long time. The industry would be a better place if more companies did what they thought was best for the game instead of following the leader....

l. " I don't want to elaborate on this because it's already off-topic but for me Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 are by far the greatest platformers of all time."
Woah...woah.....WOAH...let me just point you to this again: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/sonic-adventure
I mean, I know metacritic isn't a fact but not one of those 28 professional reviewers gave the game above a 70. I think you are quite far in the minority here.
The rest of this paragraph is fairly standard conspiracy theory bullshit...to be honest, I'm surprised you haven't started blaming the illuminati for things yet. Next are you going to tell me that Sonic 06 was a shining example of great gameplay mechanics?

m. " Unlike you say, Mario has not evolved and New Super Mario Bros U seems the same 2D game they have been doing since 1985."
I was obviously talking about 3D mario here due to the fact that I blatantly said I was talking about 3D mario. However, the New series was obviously a direct throwback to the classic mario games and was designed as such. The market was very receptive to this because Nintendo really hadn't made many (any?) 2D mario games since the SNES era. This is an example of Nintendo being able to read the market and releasing a 2D game in an era where the market clearly wanted 2D mario (remember all that talk about how Nintendo didnt follow the market? once again, I will say you are right, they lead it).

n. "Mario 3D got some minor evolutions but it continues to be the same basic character in the same sketch environment devoided of complexity."
Once again, whenever someone talks about what style 3D mario they want, they bring up one of the various 3D mario games in the past, because they each have their own unique feel and style while holding on to the central pillar of what makes the franchise great. These are of course just my opinions on the matter but I think they are supported well enough that you cannot claim every 3D mario is the same as fact (once again, I'm not arguing your opinion...just saying that they aren't facts).

o. "you are naive if you don't see that and think videogaming web sites could afford to express their own specific opinion about everything"
And you are naive to believe that sites would call a game that they hate the best platformer of all time or give out 10s left and right. You have no proof here and while score inflation is likely a thing, it would not cause a bad game to be heralded as one of the best of all time. Nintendo games hold the top three spots for best reviewed games of all time at gamerankings and three 3D mario games are in the top 10 (2 in the top 3). You are absolutely insane to think this is just because reviewers are afraid to say something bad about a Nintendo game (despite saying bad things about Nintendo almost every day)

p. "On the other hand, there's no big problem in giving bad scores to brilliant niche games"
Yet niche games or indie games still frequently recieve great scores from reviewers. This seems more like a case of you having bad taste than anything.

q. " As for those 28 songs from Mario Galaxy, if they were instrumental-only and very simple, that was not much of a waste."
Hold the ****ing phone. You haven't even heard these songs and you are calling them simple. Funny stuff.......jeesh, you are becoming more and more of a waste of time the longer I debate.

I would like to restate the key part of this argument: Your opinions are not factual. They are conclusions loosely based on facts. Please realize this or you are just going to keep embarassing yourself

(edited for language)

Here is an issue with your 'objective' measure: one of your core 'objective' metrics is subjective at heart by your own definition. How can you objectively measure talent, and then how it translates to work output? Keep in mind that passing the buck to 'payroll' for talented staff is inherently fallible, as there are many other deciding factors that determine pay.

1. This is your opinion, you said it yourself, but you still state it as fact. Also, using "usually" is a complete cop-out, which you will no doubt return to when someone points out your error to exhonerate yourself of the claim, yet you will continue to treat it as a solid claim. You can't have it both ways.

2. This seems to be the source of a lot of your confusion. You agree that the burden of proof is yours, but if flaws are pointed out, the onus is still on you to counter appropriately with evidence.

"When debating any issue, there is an implicit burden of proof on the person asserting a claim. An argument from ignorance, which is a logical fallacy, occurs when the lack of proof for a proposition is assumed to prove that the proposition is false.  This has the effect of shifting the burden of proof to the person criticizing the claim, but is not valid reasoning" [1]

I can indeed say the OP is wrong without providing evidence. If you cannot provide sufficient evidence to actually support your OP, then it is not valid. Not the other way around.

Similarly, I have pointed out serious flaws in your 'objective' measure of 'effort' in games to filter out quality titles, and shown that your filter is flawed and omits many quality games. The onus is not on me to provide you with a flawless system, that is your job. Furthermore, that does not validate your 'quality filter' just because it is the best tool you have at your disposal. You know its limitations, yet continue to use it to work outside those limitations i.e. prove all games that don't meet your criteria are bad/not requiring effort.

@bolded: Quite ironic considering the demands you place on others for counter-evidence. Perhaps if you started out your claims with solid evidence, there wouldn't be any issues.

Please see my previous post, the onus is on you as you made the initial claim. Don't fall victim to that logical fallacy.

I have already pointed out that using wages is fallible as there are many factors that determine someone's pay. Especially considering Nintendo's wage cuts for execs. Actually, wouldn't you agree that a highly skilled worker taking on a job for pay below their skillset is an indicator of more commitment? Where does this fit into your grand agenda that Nintendo are only out to fill their own pockets?

1: You can't expect me to be honest on this challenge. This doesn't reveal my true opinion and I don't need to be coherent or reasonable, just logical (that's why it is so easy). It's just to show you that it's totally possible to raise issues on any fact and argue forever in order to make it look like an opinion that's not even shared by everyone and thus it can be called a blatant lie when someone tries to put it as a fact. That's essencially what has been happening here with the OP.

Are you convinced yet or do you want me to continue the challenge?

2: As I said several times before to other people, voice in music is just an indicator, so it doesn't destroy my argument at all.

It's very interesting that you can't understand, on the text you bolded, that effort and money are separated by a "/", not by a "=". The example I had considered was about less effort and more money. In the end, the amount of commitment should be the same.

And...?

Your comment doesn't contradict mine at all. Anyway, could you give me 2 examples for each of those purposes?

- loss leaders

- multimedia trojan horses

- advertisement boards

- tools for brand recognition

What a BULLSHIT.

Again. BULLSHIT.

All three a public traded companies. And as such they should pay four times a year some money to their owners (aka "investors"). So they want to make money.

It seems that you're brainwashed by the Xbox One and PS4 campaigns. 

Truth is - with Xbox One and PS4 you'll get the least value for your money comopared to a PC of any console generation ever!

In fact both Xbox One and PS4 use a APU whose cores were designed for netbooks combined with a GPU which is middle-class now. And entry level within the next to years...

So: Sony and Microsoft betrayed the console gamers...

Again, voice in music is just an indicator.

How can you know whether Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber (or who is behind them) spent the same amount of time on their songs as Metalica or Foo Fighters?

You did not understand my point. If a certain design choice (even if it wasn't my choice) simplifies my work, I will have less work. I may not have asked for less work, but that's what going to happen.

Why should we only consider one-man-teams? Is there any reason for that? And no, I'm neither disregarding indie developers nor telling they're not committed. Some may have the greatest heart in this industry but I'm not talking about intentions, merit or dedication. I'm talking about commitment, and let me tell you that for me it's clear that 2 fully committed people show more commitment than 1. Therefore, commitment is scalable on its own variables (effort / time / money).